A would-be purchaser of industrial equipment, especially large scale equipment, faces a series of hurdles including not only purchasing the equipment at a desired price, but also a host of other challenges, before the full benefit of the purchased equipment can be realized. Since industrial equipment is often costly, the purchaser may need financial assistance. Once financing has been arranged and the sale can be completed, the purchaser needs to worry about relocating the equipment from the seller's site to its own desired location. Relocation of a large piece of capital equipment may involve various types of logistics services, such as transport management, shipment, export handling, freight calculation or other services. In addition, even after the equipment has been located, the purchaser may require on-call maintenance service, instrumentation and tool service, or still other services. Locating and coordinating such services, however, may be difficult and time consuming propositions.
It is necessary not only to arrange and negotiate for the delivery of each such service, but the services must themselves be financed and coordinated. Especially when the equipment desired to be purchased is offered for sale by an entity that is not a dealer in such goods, each such step presents a significant undertaking for which the seller may be unable to offer any assistance. As a result, prospective and actual purchasers of industrial equipment may be hampered, in turn putting a potential damper on the conduct of transactions in industrial equipment, which may not occur as readily as they otherwise would if there were a partial or complete solution to the problem of identifying and coordinating services incident to the purchase of the equipment.